Mobile communication devices may be programmed to perform actions including making telephone calls and executing an application. Because of the wide range of available mobile communication devices, providing applications that are executable by different devices can be difficult as different device have different hardware and software available on the devices. One issue that arises when developing an application for different mobile communication devices is that different mobile communication devices often have different types of user interfaces. For example, some user interfaces have physical buttons (e.g., a numeric or alphanumeric keypad), others have touch screen interfaces, voice interfaces, or a combination of touch screen, voice, and physical buttons. Because telephone calls have historically been addressed using a sequence of numbers, mobile communication devices are able to receive numeric input.
Some mobile communication devices have been arranged to receive user inputs as a sequence of dialed digits and to launch an application in response to the sequence of dialed digits. Typically, a user provides a particular input to denote the end of the sequence of dialed digits. For example, some mobile communication devices recognize configuration codes which may begin with or end with non-numeric key sequences such as *# or #*#. As another example, some mobile communication devices may receive a “send” command to detect an end of a sequence of dialed digits. In this case, the sequence of dialed digits may be sent to a network (e.g., to initiate a call) in response to the send command. In the case that the sequence of digits is input to launch an application, the dialed digits should not correspond to a telephone number, so the communication network returns an error signal (in response to the send command) which is output by the mobile communication device (e.g., audibly or via a display of the mobile communication device) after the dialed digits are entered. Thus, the error message indicates that the mobile communication device has been instructed to perform an action.